Saint Arnold is heading east and west. The local craft beer brewery will now offer several of its beers in Colorado and Florida at the start of the fall season. While the dates are not set in stone, marketing director, Lennie Ambrose, and Jeremy "Jerm" Johnson of the marketing team, both said a few of the Saint Arnold beers, including the Pumpkinator, will be available to Colorado and Florida residents around September.

Saint Arnold beers will be sold alongside Colorado Front Range and in the northern region of Florida.

Ambrose explains that Saint Arnold has become a familiar name in the Colorado market, especially after winning a total of 16 medals at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, including in 2010, where Saint Arnold Brewery was awarded the gold medal in the German-Style Kolsch category for Lawnmower, as well as the silver medal in the Scottish-Style Ale category for Oktoberfest.

However, that wasn't enough to get them in the Colorado and Florida markets. Ambrose explains that an employee rep who helped them launch in the Louisiana market in 2010 moved to Colorado, and the brewery decided to have her help them distribute there.

"She was moving to Colorado and it was thrown up there as a joke at first," Ambrose says. "Then we started talking about it; maybe she could do another one."

Now Saint Arnold is getting ready to sell some of its most popular brands in Colorado and northern Florida. Lawnmower, Santo, Elissa, Pumpkinator and Christmas Ale will all be distributed in those two states in coming months.

"Elissa wasn't one we thought we could go with," Ambrose says. "But the distributor said a lot of people would be drawn to it because it is more approachable than the Colorado IPAs."

Johnson says the brewery will use refrigerated trucks to keep the beer fresh and cold while it travels across the country. Saint Arnold doesn't put any preservatives in its products, so its beer being distributed to Colorado and Florida will need to be kept as fresh and cold as possible.

The craft beers will also be distributed in Colorado and Florida the way they are in Texas -- through restaurants and bars. But the Houston-based brewery isn't looking to open any more facilities in those other states.

"Honestly, right now we are focusing on expansion and I don't mean other breweries, I mean in the state of Texas," Ambrose says. "Right now we are still trying to navigate the new laws and [what] they mean to us. We could stop doing the tours and totally go to a bar model...but we don't want to do that because we have built this up for 19 years."

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"It will just give us, and we hope Texas beer, more visibility outside of the state," Ambrose says. "I don't know if any other Texas breweries sell in Colorado. If someone from Colorado were to hear about our beer, that would be a good thing for Texas craft beer in general." Bishop's Barrel No. 4 was released on Monday, August 12. It's a barrel-aged Weizenbock made with locally sourced cocoa nibs.

"There's a chocolate company, Tejas Chocolate, and they did the cocoa for us," Ambrose says. "We already had that recipe ready and we thought maybe there is someone local we can source the cocoa nut."

Don't forget to visit the brewery for tours on Saturdays. Bring your lunch, enjoy some beer and have a grand old time. Cheers!